Sports Nuggets

Draft pick Morris' reputation built on winning

Former Iowa State guard owns NCAA career record

By Nick Kosmider

The Denver Post

Posted:
06/25/2017 09:40:38 PM MDT

Nuggets draft pick Monte Morris (11) reacts to Iowa State's hot start against the Iona Gaels during the first round of the men's basketball game in the 2016 NCAA Tournament. (John Leyba / The Denver Post)

Six hours before he was drafted by the Nuggets on Thursday, Monte Morris drove away from all the nerves and sat down with his grandmother.

At the Sunset Hills Cemetery in Flint, Mich., where Shirley Faye Morris was laid to rest almost two years ago to the day, Monte was alone only in the physical sense. The matriarch of his family was there, too. He could feel her with him, just like he always has.

So the grandson talked to his grandma about the basketball dream that began growing all those years earlier, when he was an audacious fourth grader who walked up to the most famous basketball coach in Michigan and told him to remember the name Monte Morris.

"He tugged on Tom Izzo and said, 'You're going to recruit me one day,'" said Mike Williams, Morris' high school coach and longtime mentor.

Morris won 99 games and two state championships in four years at Beecher High School and was named Mr. Michigan Basketball as a senior. Izzo, the Michigan State coach, indeed came to know Morris' name well, but he never offered him a scholarship. It was a mistake, he later admitted to Williams. So Morris went instead to Iowa State, where he won 100 more games — the most of any player in school history — and became the NCAA career leader in assist-to-turnover ratio.

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He played especially brilliantly his final two years for the Cyclones, leading them to the Sweet 16 as a junior, with both NCAA Tournament victories coming in Denver, and to the Big 12 Tournament title as a senior. He also played those last two years with a heavy heart. Shirley Faye passed away at the age of 70 on June 28, 2015, one day after Monte's 20th birthday.

On a hot midsummer day in Flint, they gathered to celebrate again.

"I went to her gravesite and talked to her for about five minutes," Morris said. "I know she was with me. She will be with me throughout my career."

The professional chapter of Morris' career officially began when the Nuggets selected the 6-foot-3 point guard with the 51st overall pick in the draft. It's a spot that comes with few guarantees. The Nuggets have three point guards on their roster who are currently under contract: Jameer Nelson, Emmanuel Mudiay and Jamal Murray, all of whom were first-round picks when they entered the league. There is no easy path to the Pepsi Center floor.

That's all fine with Morris. Whenever he's been given the chance, as the DJ Khaled hit goes, all he does is win.

Point guard family

Before he was one of Flint's favorite sons, he was the son of the point guard.

Tonya Morris led Beecher to a state championship while scoring more than 1,000 career points. She was a star before she was the star's mom.

"A lot of people say she was really, really good," Monte Morris said. "The way she talks, she can still shoot a jumper. So I know she can play a little bit."

Tonya Morris' passion for basketball carried her to coaching. She imparts upon middle school and high school players the value of taking care of the basketball.

Tonya's coaching extended to her son. She'd film his games and then make him explain what he saw on each play as the two pored over the tape together, two point guards talking shop in the living room. Those sessions opened Morris' eyes, allowed him to see areas where he could enhance his teammates with how he delivered them the ball. He also developed his own unique philosophy on ball security.

"I treat the ball like it is her purse," Morris said. "I wouldn't want nobody talking that from her or me."

Cornell Mann first saw Morris play as a freshman at Beecher, only it was hard to tell he was a freshman. Freshmen weren't supposed to have such an advanced grasp on the game, gliding around the floor while lifting the level of the older players around him. Morris was playing chess on a checkers board.

"What you see with his assist-to-turnover ratio, you could see then," said Mann, who recruited Morris to Iowa State. "He really took care of the ball and valued the ball. He's always been a guy other dudes want to play with because he's so selfless in his approach to the game. You could see even then he was always trying to do what was best for the team."

Williams saw that style in Morris taking shape even earlier. The coach showed up to watch a game in Beecher's middle school feeder program. He couldn't take his eyes off the tiny fourth grader who was dominating the eighth graders.

"He was the best player of the floor, period," Williams said. "He understood time, score, situation. He didn't turn the ball over. When it was time to take one shot with 30 seconds left in the half, he got his team into their offense, got the ball set up on an isolation play and scored. I'm going, 'This kid is for real.' "

"As Naismith intended"

Morris played in a Beecher record 109 games during his high school career. He lost only 10 times, once over his final two seasons. Morris kept winning at Iowa State. He led the Cyclones to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament under two different coaches. He did so while embracing the very root of the point guard position, becoming the whisk that rapidly stirred the batter of one of college basketball's most high-paced attacks. The Cyclones played an NBA-style offense under Fred Hoiberg, who now coaches the Bulls, and didn't deviate from that much when Steve Prohm took over before Morris' junior season.

In an attack that valued possessions, Morris was the perfect conductor. He didn't give the ball to the other team and he consistently found his teammates. In a complicated game, Morris was the soothing simplicity. He shattered the NCAA career record for assist-to-turnover ratio at 4.65.

"He's really good in the pick-and-roll and he can adjust on the fly," said Prohm, who helped Morris grieve the death of his grandmother in the early days of his tenure at Iowa State. "What Monte Morris did for Iowa State and college basketball was incredible. His character is off the charts. He's a guy who other guys will gravitate toward him because he will make people better."

Mann, now an assistant at Missouri, summed up Morris another way: "He plays the game the way James Naismith intended."

But for all the eye-popping numbers and, more importantly, the victories they helped compile, Morris didn't fit neatly into the measurement machine that runs the draft process. His height is not ideal for the position in today's league with the length of defenders at all spots in the floor. Some scouts have questioned his range and whether he's enough of an athlete to be able to create at the NBA level.

Morris shrugs it off. He's already counting down the days to July's summer league in Las Vegas, when he can let basketball talk for him, like it always has.

"I honestly just think I've been slept on, and that's what summer league is for," Morris said. "Summer league is for guys who get passed up on. If you think you should have been drafted higher, this is the time to show it. Me feeling that way, I'm definitely going to play with a chip on my shoulder and just have fun with it."

At his draft party in Flint on Thursday, Morris jumped up when his selection by the Nuggets was announced and turned toward his mom, embracing the family's other point guard in a hug. He gave a shout out to his grandmother in front of the family and friends that had gathered, telling them Shirley Faye was looking down on them.

Early Friday evening, less than 24 hours after he was drafted, Morris was asked when he would be arriving in Denver to begin next chapter of basketball career heavy on winning.

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